Sudan Lab Seizure Poses Biohazard Risk during Lull in Battles

This picture shows destroyed vehicles in southern Khartoum on April 19, 2023 amid fighting between Sudan's regular army and paramilitaries following the collapse of a 24-hour truce. (AFP)
This picture shows destroyed vehicles in southern Khartoum on April 19, 2023 amid fighting between Sudan's regular army and paramilitaries following the collapse of a 24-hour truce. (AFP)
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Sudan Lab Seizure Poses Biohazard Risk during Lull in Battles

This picture shows destroyed vehicles in southern Khartoum on April 19, 2023 amid fighting between Sudan's regular army and paramilitaries following the collapse of a 24-hour truce. (AFP)
This picture shows destroyed vehicles in southern Khartoum on April 19, 2023 amid fighting between Sudan's regular army and paramilitaries following the collapse of a 24-hour truce. (AFP)

Fighting in Sudan eased on Tuesday and more foreigners and locals fled the capital Khartoum, where marauding combatants created what a UN agency said was a "high risk of biological hazard" by seizing a laboratory.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said one of the warring parties had taken control of a national health facility that stores measles and cholera pathogens for vaccinations, and ejected the technicians.

It gave few details and did not say which of the two sides - the army or the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) - had captured the lab, which also contains a major blood bank.

An exodus of embassies and aid workers from Africa's third largest country has raised fears that civilians who remain will be in greater danger if an alternative to hostilities is not found before a shaky three-day truce ends on Thursday.

The clashes have paralyzed hospitals and other essential services, and left many people stranded in their homes with dwindling supplies of food and water. The WHO has reported 14 attacks on health facilities and is relocating staff to safety.

Yassir Arman, a leading figure in a civilian political coalition, the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), urged humanitarian groups and the international community to help restore water and electricity, and send generators to hospitals.

"There are bodies scattered in streets and sick people who cannot find medicine, no water nor electricity. People should be allowed to bury their dead during the ceasefire," he said.

The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said shortages of food, water, medicines and fuel were becoming "extremely acute", with prices for basic goods including bottled water rocketing, and it had been forced to cut back operations for safety reasons.

The UN refugee agency forecast that hundreds of thousands of people might flee into neighboring countries.

‘Why is the world abandoning us?’

As foreign governments evacuated their nationals, those with nowhere to go said they felt forsaken. They fear fewer international observers may mean worse bloodshed to come - and less respect for civilians.

"Why is the world abandoning us at a time of war?" said Sumaya Yassin, 27, accusing foreign powers of being selfish.

"Sudanese people are afraid that there might be unethical practices in the war against civilians and using civilians as human shields," said a Khartoum man who gave his name as Ahmed.

"These are our fears after the evacuation of expatriates," he said with a nod to Sudan's long history of bloody civil wars.

Since fighting erupted on April 15, tens of thousands have left for neighboring Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan, despite the uncertainty of conditions there.

With civilians leaving Khartoum in cars and buses, the streets of one of Africa's biggest metropolitan areas were largely emptied of ordinary daily life, with those still in the city huddling at home while fighters roamed outside.

"The situation has become very dangerous, including in areas not under bombardment," French journalist Augustine Passilly, who has worked in Sudan since 2020, said down a poor telephone line as she tried to cross the border into Egypt.

"There is nothing left in stores, no water, no food. People have started to go out armed, with axes, with sticks."

Hundreds dead

The fighting has turned residential areas into battlefields. Air strikes and artillery shells have killed at least 459 people, wounded over 4,000, destroyed hospitals and limited food distribution in a nation already reliant on aid for a third of its 46 million people.

In a country flanking the Red Sea, Horn of Africa and Sahel regions, the violence risks a "catastrophic conflagration", UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday.

Foreign countries have airlifted embassy staff out after several attacks on diplomats, including the killing of an Egyptian attaché shot on his way to work.

Britain launched a large-scale evacuation of its nationals on military flights from an airfield north of Khartoum. France and Germany said they had each evacuated more than 500 people of various nationalities, and that a French commando had been hit by crossfire during the operation.

Many Sudanese families used the relative lull as a chance to search for transport to get to places out of harm's way.

"Maybe the hardest moment is thinking about leaving the country," said Intisar Mohammed El Haj, a resident of Khartoum whose children had hidden under beds from the sound of explosions before the family fled to Egypt.

Another resident reported that a bus fare to Egypt had jumped six-fold, to $340.

Lab technicians out

Speaking to reporters in Geneva via video link from Sudan, the WHO's Nima Saeed Abid said gunmen had thrown technicians out of the National Public Health Laboratory.

"And there is high risk of biological hazards because in that lab we have already isolates, we have measles isolates as well as cholera isolates," he said.

The RSF accused the army of exploiting the truce deal - one of several that have quickly unraveled - by intensifying movements of fighters and supplies of ammunition for further attacks.

Pillaging of homes in abandoned neighborhoods was increasing and the RSF said it had ordered unit commanders to "put an end to recklessness and looting".

A Reuters witness heard sporadic gunfire on Tuesday morning in the city of Omdurman, adjacent to the capital. Explosions were also reported in Bahri, across the Nile.

The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) said the US and Saudi Arabia had brokered the latest ceasefire.



Hundreds of Thousands Flee as Israel Seizes Rafah in New Gaza 'Security Zone'

A youth rides a bicycle as people commute along the al-Rashid road, the only route linking the northern and southern parts of the Palestinian territory, on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP)
A youth rides a bicycle as people commute along the al-Rashid road, the only route linking the northern and southern parts of the Palestinian territory, on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP)
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Hundreds of Thousands Flee as Israel Seizes Rafah in New Gaza 'Security Zone'

A youth rides a bicycle as people commute along the al-Rashid road, the only route linking the northern and southern parts of the Palestinian territory, on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP)
A youth rides a bicycle as people commute along the al-Rashid road, the only route linking the northern and southern parts of the Palestinian territory, on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP)

Hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans sought shelter on Thursday in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah, part of a newly announced "security zone" they intend to seize.

A day after declaring their intention to capture large swathes of the crowded enclave, Israeli force pushed into the city on Gaza's southern edge which had served as a last refuge for people fleeing other areas for much of the war, reported Reuters.

Gaza's health ministry reported at least 97 people killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, including at least 20 killed in an airstrike around dawn in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City.

Rafah "is gone, it is being wiped out," a father of seven among the hundreds of thousands who had fled from Rafah to neighboring Khan Younis, told Reuters via a chat app.

"They are knocking down what is left standing of houses and property," said the man who declined to be identified for fear of repercussions.

After a strike killed several people in Khan Younis, Adel Abu Fakher was checking the damage to his tent.

"Is anything left for us? There’s nothing left for us. We’re being killed while asleep," he said.

The assault to capture Rafah is a major escalation in the war, which Israel restarted last month after effectively abandoning a ceasefire in place since January.

GAZANS FEAR PERMANENT DEPOPULATION

Israel has not spelled out its longterm aims for the security zone its troops are now seizing. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayahu said troops were taking an area he called the "Morag Axis", a reference to an abandoned former Israeli settlement once located between Rafah on Gaza's southern edge and the adjacent main southern city Khan Younis.

Gazans who had returned to homes in the ruins during the ceasefire have now been ordered to flee communities on the northern and southern edges of the strip.

They fear that Israel's intention is to depopulate those areas indefinitely, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people permanently homeless in one of the poorest and most crowded territories on earth. The security zone includes some of Gaza's last agricultural land and critical water infrastructure.

Since the first phase of the ceasefire expired at the start of March with no agreement to prolong it, Israel has imposed a total blockade on all goods reaching Gaza's 2.3 million residents, recreating what international organizations describe as a humanitarian catastrophe after weeks of relative calm.

Israel's stated goal since the start of the war has been the destruction of the Hamas group which ran Gaza for nearly two decades and led the attack on Israeli communities in October 2023 that precipitated the war.

But with no effort made to establish an alternative administration, Hamas-led police returned to the streets during the ceasefire. Fighters still hold 59 dead and living hostages which Israel says must be handed over to extend the truce; Hamas says it will free them only under a deal that ends the war.

Israeli leaders say they have been encouraged by signs of protest in Gaza against Hamas, with hundreds of people demonstrating in north Gaza's Beit Lahiya on Wednesday opposing the war and demanding Hamas quit power. Hamas calls the protesters collaborators and says Israel is behind them.

The war began with a Hamas attack on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023 with gunmen killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages according to Israeli tallies. Israel's campaign has so far killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities say.

Rafah residents said most of the local population had followed Israel's order to leave, as Israeli strikes toppled buildings there. But a strike on the main road between Khan Younis and Rafah stopped most movement between the two cities.

Movement of people and traffic along the western coastal road near Morag was also limited by bombardment, said residents.

"Others stayed because they don't know where to go, or got fed up of being displaced several times. We are afraid they might be killed or at best detained," said Basem, a resident of Rafah who declined to give a second name.

Markets have emptied and prices for basic necessities have soared under Israel's total blockade of food, medicine and fuel.

The Palestinian Health Ministry, which is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank but has nominal authority over hospitals in Gaza, said Gaza's entire healthcare system was at risk of collapse.